A federal judge in Alexandria, Va., has dismissed a lawsuit alleging copyright infringement by iParadigms LLC, the company that runs the Turnitin plagiarism-detection service.
Four high school students had sued the company over the use of their written works, which the service had collected in an archive and used to assess the originality of newly submitted student papers. (“Online Anti-Plagiarism Service Sets Off Court Fight,” May 4, 2007).
In his March 11 opinion, U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton wrote that the use of the student works constituted “a fair use under U.S. copyright law and is therefore not copyright infringement.”
The judge stated that such use “provides a substantial public benefit through the network of institutions using Turnitin.”
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